The Speed of Healing: Why Secure Relationships Require Us to Slow Down
A huge reason why creating and maintaining secure, healthy relationships can be challenging for trauma survivors is that we’re conditioned to move fast to survive. For many survivors, trauma shifts our internal speed settings to “high,” where rushing feels safer than pausing, and urgency replaces presence and patience. Slowing down feels risky, and lingering in the space of unknowns can feel impossible. As a girly with control issues, sitting with the unknown is VERY hard for me (even 11 years after my abusive relationship!)
But healing, and the security we yearn for in relationships, asks us to move at a much slower, more deliberate pace.
For a relationship to feel truly secure, we need to take time to discern if someone is safe, reliable, and compatible with us on an emotional level. This isn't a process that can be rushed or assumed. When we rush or assume, we often are projecting our hopes and dreams onto the person, not seeing them for who they really are. (BEEN THERE). Just as we wouldn’t instantly trust a stranger with our life story or open up our most tender places on a whim, we can’t instantly know if someone is a good fit for our lives. Discernment takes time. It takes small moments of vulnerability, shared experiences, and the gradual build-up of trust. For someone healing from trauma, that discernment process can feel like swimming upstream—our instincts may urge us to speed up, to get answers quickly, but a secure relationship doesn’t grow through force and pressure.
We get to see that it’s safe to go slow in getting to know someone; that we can retain our individuality while getting to know someone new.
Secure relationships also require the opportunity to see trustworthiness in action. Words are one thing, but actions, especially consistent ones, reveal whether someone can be counted on. Trauma survivors may find themselves wanting to know right away whether someone can be trusted, yet the reality is that trust is shown over time, not declared in a moment. This, too, takes time.
The kind of trust that forms the foundation of a healthy relationship doesn’t usually happen overnight—it’s nurtured slowly, through showing up for each other, keeping promises, and navigating life’s ups and downs as a team.
And then there’s the role of conflict, which can feel particularly challenging when your nervous system is activated easily (thanks trauma).
In secure relationships, conflicts aren’t catastrophes; they’re opportunities to better understand each other.
But for those carrying the echoes of past hurts, conflict may feel like a threat or a signal of doom. Trauma primes many of us to either avoid it altogether or face it aggressively, as a form of self-protection. Yet, in a secure relationship, approaching conflict with curiosity and compassion helps both people feel heard and seen. Again, this requires time. It demands that we move slowly enough to truly listen, resist the urge to jump to conclusions, and have faith that disagreement doesn’t mean the end of the relationship—it’s an invitation to go deeper.
Seeing a pattern here?
Trauma teaches us to go fast. For good reason! We probably once needed to act quickly - there’s no need to shame or disrespect that.
Our nervous systems may urge us to sense danger at every turn, to avoid vulnerability, to fight, flee, or freeze at the first sign of discomfort. Speed becomes synonymous with survival. If you know what it’s like to be in an abusive relationship, you know that things move fast. You go from strangers to “I love you, I need you” in a matter of weeks. And you go from “you mean everything to me” to “you’re the reason everything is wrong” just as quickly. Everything moves fast, fast, fast.
But the speed of healing is something else entirely.
Healthy relationships unfold at a pace that feels slow, steady, and intentional- even if feelings move fast.
It’s a shift from the urgency of survival to the patience of security. Healing asks us to go slowly enough to let someone in without bypassing our own boundaries. It invites us to slow down and recognize that we deserve connections that feel safe, connections that aren’t rushed or coupled with the pressure of survival.
Choosing to move at the speed of healing isn’t easy for many of us survivors. It can feel excruciating to resist the pull of old patterns. Yet, it’s in that slowness that real connection and security grow.
Healing asks us to breathe, to listen, to wait, and to let trust build one step at a time.
Healing asks us to rewrite our pace so that instead of racing, we linger, letting ourselves experience what it feels like to be seen, safe, and understood—at a pace we can sustain.
